


Strength of Desire

by 0bsidianFire



Series: Static Tuned in to Reason [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Arguing, Asexual Character, Au Ra Xaela (Final Fantasy XIV), Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Establishing Character Moment, Gen, Headcanon, Magic, Magic Theory, Origin Story, Theorycrafting, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2019, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:52:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23814886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bsidianFire/pseuds/0bsidianFire
Summary: Kharagal has a very good idea of what she wants to do with herself, even if other people her own age don't know what that is. Like the one guy who thinks they would go great together as a couple. Kharagal sets him straight the best way she knows how.For FFXIVwrite2019 - Prompt #24: Unctuous
Series: Static Tuned in to Reason [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/860852
Kudos: 7





	Strength of Desire

_Set when Kharagal is around sixteen years old_

Kharagal wasn’t sure when she realized Udgan Toragana was training her not just as a warmage, but as her apprentice. It might have been when Udgan Toragana started telling her details no one else knew about when Toragana had wandered the desert in her younger years. It might have been when Udgan Toragana told Kharagal about the arcane defenses Toragana laid out every time the Meirqid made camp. Kharagal definitely had realized it by the time she became a woman and no one in her family protested when Toragana was the one to tattoo the arcane geometries that kept Azim’s aether from noticing her onto her back instead of Kharagal’s mother’s mother as was tradition.

And Kharagal genuinely liked being a udgan’s apprentice. She liked spending her days shaping aether into forms that rang with symmetry. She liked spending days out in the desert creating aether geometries just to see what they did. The idea of leaving the Meirqid to learn from the legendary inhabitants of the desert that only taught those who passed their tests was very attractive. Kharagal had known for a very long time that what she loved was figuring out how aether worked. And she was more than fine with dedicating her life to it.

Unfortunately, not everyone got that. For the past month, Osbeg had been watching her. And Kharagal was getting rather tired of it. He had made a point to be waiting for her when she got back to camp from experimenting with arcana and asking her if she wanted to do anything with him. Kharagal had always told him she was too busy for that, because she was. Experimenting with magic took up a lot of time and there were things she had to do with her family to keep their household functioning.

And if that kept Kharagal too busy to do anything with Osbeg, that was fine with her. Osbeg was hitting the age where his growth spurt kicked in and he was now starting to find he could compete with people older than him. It turned out his spearwork showed promise and several of the older warriors were interested in training him. He wasn’t a bad guy, but his new-found strength had gone to his head and made him more thick-headed than usual.

Today’s altercation started out like any other. Kharagal had been out in the desert practicing Fester. It was a tricky arcane spell that relied on an arcane disease already being present. One of the hang-ups Kharagal had with it was that it had a long ramp-up time and the geometry suggested there had to be some way to speed it up. Unfortunately, the Xaela udgan had known of that problem for longer than any of them could remember and had tried various ways to get around the long build-up time. They had never found a way to do it. The closest they could get was committing the spell to memory by doing many, many repeated casts. So Kharagal was more frustrated than usual.

Frustrated enough that when Osbeg asked her if she wanted to do anything with him, that she finally snapped. “When are you going to stop talking to me? You have to know I’m never going to say yes by now.”

Osbeg blinked blue eyes at her in confusion. “Why wouldn’t you? I’ve been winning against our peers more and more and am one of the strongest to-be warriors our age. We’d be so great together.”

“What?” Kharagal raised an eyebrow at him. Clearly Osbeg hadn’t seen Aruktai fight at full strength while Karash held his will. Terrifying was an understatement.

“You haven’t seen it?” Osbeg looked at her with what might be pity. “People say you’re one of the strongest warmages in generations. And yet they purposely leave you out of so much. You must be so lonely.”

Kharagal almost dissolved into laughter. Of course most people outside her family didn’t want to get to know her. It was obvious to them she was going to leave the Meirqid someday for an undetermined length of time. Her family wasn’t the kind of people anyone wanted to draw the attention of either. Aruktai was possessed by Karash whenever he thought his family might be hurt. Jagadai could twist the future to favor the people he liked and curse the people he hated. And Kharagal herself had the ear of one of the most respected ugdan in the tribe.

“I don’t know what you think you’re seeing, but it’s certainly not that. Now leave me alone.” Kharagal made to move past Osbeg and further into the camp.

Osbeg put a hand on her shoulder to make her stop. “Wait–”

Kharagal reflexively cast Ruin backwards at him. It sent him sprawling. She followed up with Bio and Miasma. If Osbeg couldn’t take the hint from what she was saying, maybe force would drive the point home. He was apparently impressed she was a warmage. Kharagal focused on Osbeg and not on the crowd of people surrounding them. “I told you to leave me alone!”

Osbeg hacked around the fluid filling his lungs as he struggled to his feet. “But–”

“Say anything else and I’ll cast Fester.” It wasn’t an empty threat. Bio and Miasma were painful, but they wouldn’t kill Osbeg outright. Fester though? It might if Kharagal cast it at full strength, that was the entire point of it. She did hope she wouldn’t have too. While Kharagal didn’t want this situation to happen ever again, she also didn’t really want Osbeg dead; killing fellow tribe members was never a good idea and Osbeg was good at what he did.

Osbeg looked at her in fear for the first time as he slowly backed into the crowd that had gathered and it looked like he finally saw what everyone else did. That Kharagal’s priorities weren’t like everyone else’s. Kharagal shook her head at him and walked away towards her family’s tent. If threatening people was what it took to get people to understand that she wasn’t like everyone else, Kharagal was fine with that. She had enough people who already understood that and were fine with it.

Like the people who lived in the tent she was approaching. Her older brother got up from sharpening his axe and pulled her into a full body hug. “So the next time he bothers you, do you want me and Jagadai to loom quietly in the background?” Arukati’s breath feathered through her hair and his string of sheared-off au ra horns bumped against her hip.

“You can do that after I use Fester on him once.” Kharagal looked up at him with a grin. “I need to fine-tune it so it won’t kill him outright, but mess him up for a week instead.”

Aruktai laughed. “He would deserve it. He hasn’t figured out yet that women have been fighting against people twice as tall as them for forever and know all sorts of ways to use that to their advantage.”

“I’m sure Shar will love wiping the floor with him then,” Kharagal deadpanned. Both of them laughed at the idea of someone shorter than Kharagal beating Osbeg with nothing more than her fists and feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, Kharagal is asexual. In a warring culture that probably goes to some lengths to make sure they have enough kids to offset all the deaths caused by war… never mind all the other natural ways people probably die in that culture that don’t have to do with war.


End file.
